Arts/Life

Performing Arts

5:31 am

Sun August 2, 2015

Conan O'Brien's been sued by a comedy writer who alleges he's been stealing jokes. But journalist Larry Getlen warns not to assume the worst: In the world of topical comedy, similar jokes are bound to arise.

If anything was going to make the case for putting warning labels on music, it was 2 Live Crew at the turn of the 1990s. The hip-hop group's output was so sexually explicit that it eventually became the subject of an obscenity case that made its way through some of the highest courts in this country. The man at the center of it all was Luther Campbell, a.k.a Luke Skywalker, the alter-ego that helped make 2 Live Crew one of the most legendary and notorious rap acts ever.

This summer, NPR is getting crafty in the kitchen. As part of Weekend Edition's Do Try This At Home series, chefs are sharing their cleverest hacks and tips โ taking expensive, exhausting or intimidating recipes and tweaking them to work in any home kitchen.

This week: We learn to make a "counterfeit" version of duck confit, a classic French dish that traditionally can take days to prepare.

Author Interviews

5:21 pm

Sat August 1, 2015

Beryl Markham was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West. The British-born Kenyan woman was also a racehorse trainer, a writer and a fearless adventurer.

Once famous as an aviation pioneer, she's largely dropped out of the public consciousness. But novelist Paula McClain has put her back in the spotlight โ as the protagonist of her new novel, Circling the Sun.

As part of a series calledMy Big Break, All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click, and people leap forward into their careers.

Andrew Gulli has an unusual passion: finding unpublished short stories by famous American authors. He searches through libraries and archives, finds works, researches to confirm they've never been published โ then publishes them in the literary magazine he edits, The Strand.

If you're Penn and Teller, you play Broadway. Thirty years after they first played New York, the duo are back with a new show. And it's no quiet celebration, either. In the course of a single performance, they make a cellphone ring inside a dead fish, swallow both needles and fire โ and make a rare African spotted pygmy elephant disappear.

Chicago hip-hop superstar Chance the Rapper got his name because nobody believed a guy named Chancelor Bennett could rap.

We've invited him to our free show in Millennium Park in Chicago to play a game called "Chance the Rapper, meet Saran the Wrapper." Three questions about using Saran wrap on everything other than leftovers.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of unarmed black youth Michael Brown's death at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is set to open next fall in Washington, D.C., has already started collecting banners and posters from the Ferguson protests, as well as gas masks donned by protesters and cell phone videos taken at the various demonstrations.

Book Reviews

5:03 am

Sat August 1, 2015

"A dense forest of might'ves." That's how the Willesden Kid, the main character in China Miรฉville's short story "The Dowager of Bees," describes the weird world he's found himself in: A world much like ours, only ominously askew. The Willesden Kid is a newcomer to an underground circuit of gambling. His sense of reality is already a little off the grid.

When the BBC canned the host of one of its best rated programs "Top Gear," it was a big deal. Millions of fans tuned in each week to see longtime star Jeremy Clarkson and the flashy stunts of the long-running car show.

A member of the All Things Considered family has died. Alan Cheuse, who reviewed books on our air nearly every week since the early 1980s, passed away today after a car accident in California two weeks ago. He was 75 years old.

In two minutes every week, Alan paid his respects to good writing in his soft, intense, passionate voice.

The Two-Way

2:18 pm

Fri July 31, 2015

Alan Cheuse, the novelist, teacher and longtime literary commentator for NPR, has died at the age of 75. His daughter, Sonya, confirmed that he died Friday of injuries sustained in a car accident in California two weeks ago.

"On behalf of the family, we are in deep grief at the loss of our beloved father, husband and grandfather," Sonya Cheuse told NPR. "He was the brightest light in our family. He will always remain in our hearts. We thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support."

The most mercilessly thrilling action sequence of 2015 is still the entirety of Mad Max: Fury Road. But a credible challenger has at last arrived in the perilously punctuated Mission: Impossible โ Rogue Nation, a super-fun sequel that spends its best 15 minutes at the Vienna State Opera.

11:59 am

Fri July 31, 2015

DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Next week, Jon Stewart ends his 16-year run as host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. A lot of "Daily Show" viewers share the sentiment expressed by President Obama when he made his seventh and final appearance on the show last week.

Those keeping up with the National Cinematic Lampooniverse (NCL) will be interested to know that Vacation isn't a remake of the three-plus-decade-old Chevy Chase comedy, but a continuation of the series. It takes place in a world where the events of Vacation, European Vacation and Christmas Vacation have happened and everyone has gotten older, if not wiser. Now Rusty Griswold, the grown son of Chase's Clark Griswold, wants to follow in his father's footsteps and drag his own family on a cross-country misadventure.

Movie Reviews

11:15 am

Fri July 31, 2015

In 1968, ABC paired two pundits from opposite ends of the political spectrum โ William F. Buckley Jr. (left) and Gore Vidal โ for a cut-throat intellectual faceoff. The documentary Best of Enemies explores this media milestone.

Late in a series of bruising televised debates on ABC tied to the momentous Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968, Gore Vidal beamed one of his supercilious side-eyes at William F. Buckley Jr. and called him a "crypto-fascist." Buckley bared his teeth, branded Vidal a "queer" and threatened to rearrange his face.

Some David Foster Wallace fans recoiled when they heard that sitcom veteran Jason Segel had been cast to play the Infinite Jest author in a movie. But Segel stretches impressively beyond expectations in The End of the Tour, an intriguing if not altogether convincing film. The actor is not just hulking physique and long hair wrapped in an unflattering bandana.